Cheat Sheet

Ukulele Exercises For Dummies (UK Edition)

Practising with ukulele exercises helps you take your ukulele playing to the next level. Wherever you are in your ukulele playing career, the information in this Cheat Sheet helps you develop your chord playing still further.

Mastering the Most Common Chords in Ukulele Exercises

To make the most of your ukulele exercises, you need to learn how to play the most common chords on the ukulele fretboard. These chord diagrams show you the 15 most common chords. In each case, the name of the chord is at the top of the diagram.

All of the scale diagrams which follow show moveable chord positions. They’re called this because they can be moved up and down the fretboard to create different kinds of scales in different kinds of keys. The black dots indicate where the root notes of the scale are located in the pattern. All of the scale diagrams are in root position; this means that the first and the last note of the pattern is the root note of the scale. Line up the black dots with different notes across the fretboard to create scales in different keys. The numbers in the captions show the scale formulas for each scale.

Major scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-7

Natural minor scale 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7

Harmonic minor scale 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-7

Ascending melodic minor scale 1-2-b3-4-5-6-7

Descending melodic minor scale 1-2-b3-4-5-b6-b7

Minor pentatonic scale 1-b3-4-5-b7

Major pentatonic scale 1-2-3-5-6

Blues scale 1-b3-4-b5-5-b7

Dominant bebop scale 1-2-3-4-5-6-b7-7

Major bebop scale 1-2-3-4-5-b6-6-7

Using Moveable Chord Positions in Ukulele Exercises

Use these moveable chord positions in your ukulele exercises to create different kinds of chords in different kinds of keys across the ukulele fretboard. To do this, line up the root note of the chord (represented by a black dot) with any note.